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Rowan North
Rowan North is the main antagonist of the Ghostbusters in the 2016 movie. Personality Being bullied all of his life, he has a deep resentment for all of humanity. History Trivia *On July 7, 2015, it was reported Neil Casey was cast as a villain named Rowan. Deadline "'Ghostbusters' Reboot Finds Its Bad Guy: Neil Casey" 7/7/15 *Paul Feig commented Rowan was the ultimate loner. EMPIRE Online "Paul Feig talks Ghostbusters Big Bad" 4/28/16 Paul Feig says: "Rowan is the ultimate loner, a regular New Yorker whose goal is to bring some things back to this world. He wants to trap ghosts, but for a different purpose..." EMPIRE Online "Empire Podcast: Ghostbusters Spoiler Special with Paul Feig" 09:01-09:26 7/27/16 Paul Feig says: "I needed to kind of reconcile because I'm not a believer in the paranormal so I needed to kind of reconcile a science reason so I just like the idea Rowan is almost like a homegrown terrorist, this loner terrorist but instead of using a bomb or something terrible, he's figured out he's going to bring back his own army of the undead by energizing them with this nuclear science that he's playing with that's similar with our -- the Ghostbusters because he's read their book." EMPIRE Online "Empire Podcast: Ghostbusters Spoiler Special with Paul Feig" 09:27-09:39 7/27/16 Paul Feig says: "But um I just like the idea of "God's angry man" sort of walking around. The guy who walks among us who actually can pull something off. That's much scarier to me that y'know, the gods open the heavens." EMPIRE Online "Empire Podcast: Ghostbusters Spoiler Special with Paul Feig" 09:52-09:59 7/27/16 Paul Feig says: "To me, here's this guy who you know been knocked around whose super smart and he's going to take it out on the world." *According to Rowan's framed accolades: **Rowan won The American Physical Society's J.J. Sakurai Prize on April 6, 2000 for his "work on M-Theory, its connection to eleven dimensional super gravity at low energies and the compactifying of its extradimensions." ***In reality, the winner of the Sakurai Prize in 2000 was Curtis Callan "for his classic formulation of the renormalization group, his contributions to instanton physics and to the theory of monopoles and strings." **Rowan was a physics teacher as implied by the America Association of Physics Teachers **Rowan won The Hughes Medal on November 29, 2013 for "pioneering development of inkjet printing processes for organic semiconductor devices and dramatic improvement of their functioning and efficiency." ***In reality, the winner of The Hughes Medal in 2013 was Henning Sirringhaus for the same accomplishment. **Rowan did his undergraduate studies at Stanford University (also known as The Leland Stanford Junior University) and graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Physics. **Rowan did his graduate studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and graduated with a Doctor of Science in Physics on June 6, 2007. *Rowan's last name was originally Elgin. "Ghosts of Ghostbusters" featurette (12:00 mark) *On February 14, 2016, photos of Mattel's 6" inch figures revealed Rowan's ghost form. Toy Ark "Toy Fair 2016 – Mattel Ghostbusters 2016" 2/14/16 *On February 15, 2016, "Pixel Dan" Eardley posted a 2 minute 10 second video of a Mattel representative talking about merchandise at the Toy Fair 2016. If you collected all 4 6" Ghostbusters, you can build Rowan, revealed to be the new bad guy in the movie. "Pixel Dan" Eardley YouTube "Mattel Ghostbusters 2016 New Action Figures Product Walkthrough at Toy Fair" 2/15/16 *On April 7, 2016, it was reported the FUNKO press release released on April 6 indicated Rowan was "a convicted murderer who turns into a ghost after his execution is hit by a supercharged electrical storm. This gives him the power to raise an army of other ghosts." Bloody Disgusting "Interesting New Detail On the 'Ghostbusters' Logo Spook, Rowan" 4/7/16 *During pre-visualization, the effects team used the Icon Ghost from The Real Ghostbusters as a place holder and planned for the design to evolve as work went on. Moviefone Youtube "Ghostbusters (2016) Bonus Feature | Rowan's Ghost" 00:11-00:43 9/23/16 Peter Travers says: "When we were doing the previz and we were trying to figure out what form Rowan should take, we said, 'Okay, let's just make him look like the character from the Ghostbusters cartoon.' So like let's just do that for now then Rowan will evolve and we'll see where it becomes but it turns out that was a precursor to what he eventually became. The story evolves to the point where we were drawing a parallel to the logo. All throughout the movie, Rowan is seeing that logo design so it's a great way to almost close that loop." *The No Ghost logo form Rowan first manifests as was done with traditional hand drawn animation. Moviefone Youtube "Ghostbusters (2016) Bonus Feature | Rowan's Ghost" 00:56-01:04 9/23/16 Peter Travers says: "We actually hired a traditional animator and it's hand drawn animation fora couple of shots anyway of him in the logo and kind of popping out of the logo." *In order to interact with Rowan's ghost form, the MPC visual effects team modeled the Mercado Hotel to a high level of detail. **For instance, when Rowan grows and bursts out of the hotel, the team used their proprietary rigid body destruction tool Kali. The challenge was compensating for Rowan's high speeds in relation to the speeds of the broken pieces of the hotel. fxguide "Who you gonna call? Call Illoura, MPC, SPI, & Zero VFX" 8/10/16 Line reads: "The Mercado needed to be modelled to a high level of detail because the giant Rowan ghost grows to his monster size within the building and eventually breaks his way out. For this effect we used MPC's proprietary rigid body destruction tool Kali. The challenge was that Rowan's actions were intentionally exaggerated to give him a more cartoony feel since he evolves form a 2D character into 3D. Therefore the physically based rigid body simulations of the destruction would not work well with the character's non-physically accurate motion. More specifically, Rowan would move rather fast for his size, causing the broken sections of the building to travel at extreme velocities. This meant that we needed to compensate in the simulation to try and get more realistic speeds on the broken building pieces even in cases where Rowan was moving quickly." **The MPC team worked on Rowan's muscle and fat system first so that it looked like he had the appropriate amount of mass. Next, they covered Rowan in a cloth like a person wearing a white sheet. They had to manipulate the simulation settings in order to make the cloth look as gigantic and heavy to help make Rowan feel monstrous on screen. fxguide "Who you gonna call? Call Illoura, MPC, SPI, & Zero VFX" 8/10/16 Line reads: "Firstly, we did a lot of work on his muscle and fat system in order to try and make it look like he had the appropriate amount of mass. Secondly, we covered Rowan in a cloth as if he were a gigantic ghost in a sheet. The simulation of this cloth proved very challenging because we found that most out of the box simulation solutions made him look as if he were 8 feet tall rather than hundreds of feet tall. This required us to manipulate the simulation settings to try and make the cloth feel gigantic and heavy. In the end, the wrinkle details and how they moved, proved to be our best tool in making him feel monstrous." *On page 20 of Ghostbusters International #11, pages from Rowan's copy of "Ghosts From Our Past" are posted up in panel 7 under Ray Stantz: **The drawing of giant Rowan grabbing people opposite of the 'Open the Barrier' page **The close up drawing of Rowan's face opposite of 'The Fourth Cataclysm' page *In Ghostbusters Annual 2017, on page 43, in panel 5, on the left above the microwave is a drawing of Rowan's ghost form from the 2016 movie. Dan Schoening drew it before the movie came out in theaters. Quotes References Gallery Primary Canon GB2016RowanNorthSc01.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc02.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc03.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc04.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc05.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc06.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc07.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc08.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc09.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc10.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc11.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc12.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc13.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc14.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc15.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc16.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc17.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc18.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc19.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc20.png| GB2016RowanNorthSc21.png| Collages and Edits GB2016RowanNorthsAcademicAchievementsEdit.png|''(For full size Click here)'' Behind the Scenes MercadoHotelShatzConcept01.jpg|Concept by Shae Shatz 5/25/15 MercadoHotelShatzConcept02.jpg|Concept by Shae Shatz MercadoHotelShatzConcept06.jpg|Concept by Shae Shatz GB2016ShirtWornByRowan.png|The shirt design he wore outside Stonebrook Theatre. GB2016 Rowan Last Name Ghosts of GB Featurette.jpg|Rowan's Ghost Concept Art on board showing character's original last name RowanMPCBreakdown01.jpg|Rowan Ghost in MPC VFX Breakdown RowanMPCBreakdown02.jpg|Rowan Ghost in MPC VFX Breakdown RowanMPCBreakdown03.jpg|Rowan Ghost in MPC VFX Breakdown RowanMPCBreakdown04.jpg|Rowan Ghost in MPC VFX Breakdown Secondary Canon GhostsFromOurPastIDWV3Issue11.jpg|Non-Canon Reference in Ghostbusters International #11 RowanIDWAnnual2017.jpg|Non-canon cameo seen in Ghostbusters Annual 2017 Category:GB:2016 Characters Category:Major character Category:Ghosts